


Reassigned

by tinmunky



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: C-Sec, Gen, murder investigation, police work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1247347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinmunky/pseuds/tinmunky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>C-Sec investigator Garrus Vakarian works a crime scene in a flawed system.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reassigned

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little introspection exercise. No dialog just internal thoughts. I always wondered what Garrus would be doing before he was assigned to Saren's case. Probably being pissed off at the unjustness of a corrupt system.
> 
> Music Selection while writing: Ben Howard's Burgh Island
> 
> Forgive any errors, spelling or otherwise. This is posted without beta.
> 
> Bioware owns characters.

A group of Volus vacationers found the body face up in a secluded alleyway five kliqs outside of the Zakara ward. Her face blank with the peace of death, flesh cold and white like a Presidium statue. The monochromatic gray of the hall was broken only by the pooling blood. 

C-Sec officer Garrus Vakarian knelt at the body, datapad in hand. Eyes taking in everything and nothing. He sat in silence. The sound of the crime scene crew slowly combing the surrounding area and the static of the gathering crowd of spectators faded to a dim reminder of the living. While Sophi Alonzo was not the first human victim, she was the most recent. The latest in a string of youths to vanish only to be found two to three days later. Bloody, mauled and dead. 

Garrus reached across her body, careful not to brush across her. The crime scene archiver had already taken the pictures she needed. Garrus could disturb the body. He just didn’t particularly want to. He eased his gloved talon over her eyelids and shut them to the world. Without her staring eyes he could think, he could focus.

Her body lay like all the others, on her back and naked. Whoever was doing this never left evidence laden clothes, or jewelry. Garrus turned his attention first to her face looking for obvious clues. Her hair was saturated with blood around her head and swept down to tangle around her neck. Garrus gently moved the strands to the side and uncovered her fatal wound. It looked like an animal had ravaged her neck and shoulder. Nothing clean and neat, but like something bit down on her shoulder muscle and went to town. He had heard human stories of vampires and werewolves. But this was civilized space. He could see the mass of torn muscle and shattered bone. It bit right through her clavicle and ravaged her arteries. For a fatal arterial wound the blood was minimal. She was probably murdered elsewhere and dumped here.

He would put money on this being a varren bite. A really big varren. Varrens were illegal on the Citadel without permit. They bred too quickly and tended to be volatile to the say the least. Naturally, there was big money in varrens on the Citadel.

Garrus jotted the note down. Her body was locked stiff so he didn’t bother to try and move her to see the back of the wound.

Her arms were pristine and white at her sides until you reached her hands. The burns began at her blackened fingertips and faded to her raw and blistered wrists and then up her smooth and flawless forearms. The line from burned flesh to unmarred skin provided a startling contrast.

There were scratches across her torso like she fought, like she didn’t want to die. Her knees were abraded. This girl definitely had fought. She was stronger than the others.  
The burn marks were indicative of a biotic that pushed the limit of their abilities way, way too far. She had fried her circuits when it attacked her. Garrus signed in frustration. No, he was more than frustrated, he was livid. Livid at the bureaucratic handcuffs he wore on a daily basis.

This smelled of Batarian varren pit fights. Sometimes the Volus ran racketeering outfits for. The betting circles of the upper, upper elite won and lost his year’s salary on such endeavors. All under the table of course, but if you looked hard enough and had enough money or influence, you could find them. C-Sec would investigate the crimes and collect their evidence, but nothing came of it. Nothing pointed in any direction they would follow. To anyone they could blame without quietly disappearing themselves. The officers were hamstrung. And that was a problem. After every briefing his superiors thanked him for his efforts and shelved the data.

Garrus stood angrily and stepped back from the body. He mashed the power button for his datapad a little harder than necessary and turned on the ball of his foot, heading back to the skycar. He activated his omnitool, preparing to transmit his report that would never be read. Before he could bring up his messenger, the tool flared to life, with an incoming message.

He had been reassigned, again. Those fuckers reassigned him. Preparing to volley off his angry reply, he read the words. He read them again, and a third time just to be sure he was reading them right. Garrus was being assigned to investigate Spectre Saren. For treason. 

He must have really pissed someone off this time


End file.
